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I have a question about converting from 24/96 down to 16/44.1:

I am currently working with a project that was recorded and mixed at 24bit/96khz. It sounded very good at that resolution, but then I used the Pro Tools "bounce to disk" function to save a 16bit/44.1khz copy of the master stereo mix. The lower resolution file felt like it was messy, sloppy, and not conveying as much detail as it could. I understand it can't convey all of the detail of the high-res master simply because the format is lower-res, both in dynamic range and frequency spectrum. But I do think the lo-res master could (and should) sound better than it does. I used the "Slowest Conversion (Tweak Head)" and the "Convert after bounce" settings hoping they would yield the best conversion.

Does anybody have any good information or recommendations to get better results when lowering the wordlength and sample rate? I do have the Waves Gold plugins, don't know if that helps.

Comments

dpd Sat, 03/19/2005 - 07:11

Given the level of filtering needed to provide the required level of anti-aliasing for these conversions, I'm pretty certain we are talking some pretty significant filter lengths (LOTS of coefficients) to obtain the necessary performance.

In my mind, I'd still rather dedicate a DSP device to this for real time operation than do so with a piece of software. A floating point DSP device should match the PC. Cost is another thing. (I should sit down and get the arithmetic operations & RAM calculated for this.)

The better the filters used for conversion, the more arithmetic operations are required, the longer the calculation times. It kind of comes down to 'good/cheap/quick - pick 2'. Software you can get good and cheap - but real time is the tough one. In DSP, cheap is the toughie.

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